


Swan Song

by Morkhan



Series: Needle Scratch [1]
Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death, Gen, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 12:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11486469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morkhan/pseuds/Morkhan
Summary: He dies alone, on a dark grey morning, with music humming in his ears.Baby drives the final heist. It does not end well for him. Part of a collection of alternate endings to Baby Driver.





	Swan Song

Verse 1

Darling hears it happen.

Baby is bobbing and weaving through the city like he could drive it with his eyes closed, darting and dodging, dancing around cops and cruisers like the fucking Fred Astaire of Fords. He’s doing good—he always does good—but something’s off. The kid is driving angry. He turns the wheel like he is trying to break it off, yanks the gear shaft like it insulted his mom, nostrils flaring, lips in a snarl, face so red she half-expects him to start breathing fire.

One time, after a job, Darling told Buddy that Baby was part-terminator; only a fucking robot could drive the way he did.

This Baby was no robot. This Baby was a _demon._

Somehow, they wind up stopped in an alley. In front of them, a lone foot cop, gun drawn and aimed. On the other, practically every cop car in the ATL. Way out is pretty obvious, but Baby ain’t driving.

“Run his ass over!” says Bats.

Baby doesn’t move.

“Put your foot on the gas, you mute motherfucker!” Bats insists.

Buddy chimes in. “We gotta go, Baby!”

Darling joins with him. “They’re gonna fucking shoot us, kid! Get the lead out!”

Baby’s grip on the wheel tightens so much she can see every vein in his hands. What’s he thinking? What the fuck is he thinking?

Bats raises his shotgun towards the cop. “Fuck it! I’ll do it mys—”

And Baby _floors_ it like he’s trying to stomp through the floorboards. Bats gets plastered against the back of his seat, the cop starts shooting and backing up but Baby’s barreling down on him and for a second, she thinks he might really do it. He might actually turn this pig into fender ketchup. Baby’s First Kill.

But he doesn’t. He turns so sharp and fast that heads hit window glass; swerves and curves around that fat blue-shirt fascist like only he could.

That’s when she hears it.

You’d think, over all the noise—tires squealing, glass shattering, gunshots cracking like thunder, cops shouting orders over louspeaker, crooks shouting “SHIIIIIIIT” into the wind—it’d be impossible to hear a sound so soft. But she hears it. It sticks out to her like a grenade going off at a funeral. Baby _gasps_ , sudden, subtle, involuntary—a short suck of air, like somebody poked him where he was ticklish. She doesn’t know why it sticks out to her so much. Not at first.

They speed off into the city, the cops caught in the funnel. Baby veers onto the 85 and they all take a second to breathe

“Lot of bullets flying back there,” Buddy says. “Everybody okay?"

“I’m good,” Darling says.

“I’m a little pissed off, but ain’t no holes in me,” Bats says.

Baby keeps both hands on the wheel, eyes straight ahead. “I’m fine,” he says.

Darling squints. The sound plays again in her mind. “Bats, check him,” she orders.

Bats doesn’t have to look long. “Shit. _Shit_.”

Buddy leans forward, brow furrowed. “Baby’s hit?”

“I’m fine,” Baby says.

“Bullshit. Where’d they get him?” Darling asks.

“Chest,” Bats says.

“How bad?” Darling asks.

“We need to change cars,” Baby interrupts as they head into a tunnel. It takes him barely a second to guide another car off the road. The four of them hop out. Buddy and Bats go handle the carjacking. Darling goes to handle Baby.

She can already see the blood has seeped through his shirt and the hoodie. He’s walking funny, breathing funny, starting to sweat. “Baby, here, lean on me,” she says, trying to position herself under his arm.

He flinches away. “I’m fine.”

As she and Baby head for their new ride, Bats and Buddy usher its previous driver back to their old one, sitting him in the driver’s seat. “Drive straight, and don’t stop ‘til you run outta gas, you hear me?” Bats says.

“Y-yes sir,” the driver says.

“GO!” Bats says, and the driver peels out, heading straight ahead. Bats puts a couple bullets in his rear fender for emphasis, and the driver speeds up. The chopper follows the decoy, leaving them an opening to escape.

Baby opens the door and starts to get in the driver’s seat, but Darling stops him. “Let Buddy drive.”

Baby shakes his head. “I’m the driver.”

Buddy rushes over. “Kid, you’ve been shot. Get in the back and let Darl—”

And then, something she never in a million years thought she’d see— _Baby pulls his fucking gun on them_. He holds it one-handed, aim unsteady, but it’s a statement.

“ _I’m the driver,_ ” he says, teeth clenched.

For a second, they can only stand there and gape. What the _fuck_.

“Fuck it!” Bats says. “Boy wants to drive, let him drive, we got to go!”

It’s hard to argue with the sound of sirens getting closer every second. Buddy curses under his breath and gets in the back. Darling follows, and Bats has barely shut the door before Baby peels out and jumps the median, doing an about-face and taking the first off-ramp back into the city.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Baby!?” Darling shouts.

“We’re trying to help you, you little shit,” Buddy agrees.

“I’m fine,” Baby says, his voice weirdly thick. He coughs, and the car lurches just slightly, but he doesn’t lose control.

Bats puts a hand on his shoulder. “Keep it together, Baby. We gonna get through this. You take care of us, we take care of you.”

Baby squeals the car around a corner, but he takes it wide, scrapes the wall hard, shattering the driver’s side windows. He recovers quick, but Darling can already see the pedestrians pulling out their phones to call the cops about reckless driving. _Shit_.

“We’re almost there, Baby, just hold on,” Darling says, eyes glued to her driver. His face is pale, shining with sweat, slightly pinched; he’s hurting. The impact knocked his shades off and popped out one of his earbuds, but he’s making no attempt to put it back. Something about watching it dangle there forgotten makes her sick.

They drift into the parking garage where the switch cars are waiting, and Baby doesn’t so much ‘park’ as run one tire over the parking stop and then take his foot off the gas, sitting back in his seat. Three doors open: Buddy heads straight for Baby’s door. Darling heads straight for Buddy.

Bats heads straight for his switch car. “Come on!”

“What the fuck, Bats!?” Darling shouts.

“Help us with the kid!” Buddy says, flinging open Baby’s door and starting to pull the boy out. Baby doesn’t fight him or insist he’s fine—he actually reaches for Buddy, wraps his arms around his neck. She feels like she’s living in upside-down world.

“The kid is _dead_!” Bats says. “Ain’t nothing we can do for that boy. Leave him! He’ll tie up the cops!”

Right on cue, the distant echo of sirens seeps into the corridors of the garage, and she doesn’t have to listen long to know they’re getting closer. Baby’s leaning limply against Buddy’s shoulder, his shirt soaked through so bad that it’s starting to seep into his jeans. His breathing is ragged and raspy. There’s blood on his lips. His eyes are down, not looking at anything.

Buddy takes a long look at the kid, flicks his eyes towards the sound of sirens, and makes up his mind. “Sorry, kid,” he says, lowering him back into the car.

Baby’s head snaps up, eyes locked on Buddy, confused, afraid. “Wha… what?”

Darling runs forward. “What the fuck!? Jace, we can’t just leave him.”

“Mon, we can’t _help_ him,” Buddy says, shaking his head and doing his best to put Baby down. Baby’s not making it easy—he’s started clutching at Buddy’s jacket, weak hands looking for something to hold onto.

“No… no…” he says weakly.

“I’m _sorry_ , kid,” Buddy says, grabbing Baby by the shoulders. “It’s a tough business.”

With a final pat on Baby’s shoulder—like he’s giving him a fucking pep talk or something—Buddy abandons Baby in the driver’s seat and starts towards the other switch car. Bats has already peeled out of the parking lot. Darling can’t fucking believe what she’s seeing.

“Come on!” Buddy says. “We’ve gotta go!”

Baby looks at her with pleading eyes. “P-please…” he says.

The sirens get closer, and Darling grits her teeth. She’s not going down today, not for Baby or anybody else… but she can’t just leave him. “Get the fucking car and bring it here!” she shouts at Buddy.

Buddy dashes off, and Darling kneels beside the open driver’s side door. “Sorry, Baby,” she says, cupping his face in her hands. “Looks like this is goodnight.”

Baby shakes his head, paws at his jacket with weak, shaking fingers. “Please…” he says again.

Suddenly, she gets it. “Music?” she asks, reaching into his pocket. “You wanna hear a song?”

Baby nods.

She pulls out his iPod and unlocks it. “What you wanna hear?” she asks. “Who’s gonna sing you to sleep, Baby boy?”

He leans forward and whispers something in her ear. It only takes her a few seconds to find the song and hit play. She locks the iPod and curls his limp hand around it, reaches around for that dangling earbud and puts it back where it belongs, and suddenly the pain just seems to melt off of him. He goes to another world just as Buddy pulls up in the car.

“Darling!” Buddy says.

The sirens are closer than ever. The cops can’t be more than a minute out, but Darling still finds time to lean in and press the gentlest kiss a killer can give to a dying boy’s forehead. “Sweet dreams, Baby.”

Baby locks grateful eyes with her for just a moment, and then he’s somewhere far, far away.

Darling jumps in the car and Buddy’s off, peeling out and leaving Baby in the dust. The last time she sees him, Baby is leaned back in the seat, eyes closed, head just barely bobbing to the beat, bloodstained lips mouthing the words.

They drive in silence for a while. Maybe out of respect. Maybe because it’s hard to talk around the fucked-up thing they just did. Hey, they never claimed to be good people.

“Doc’s gonna be pissed,” she says.

Buddy hmms in response. “Wouldn’t want to be the guy who has to tell him.”

* * *

The guy who has to tell him is Bats, which explains why Bats’s brains are all over the wall when Buddy and Darling step off the elevator.

“Told you,” Darling says, elbowing her beau in the ribs.

“I didn’t disagree with you, _dear_ ,” Buddy says through clenched teeth.

When they round the corner, Doc is seated at the table, a mess of toy cars and cassette tapes scattered in front of him, and a shotgun within arm’s reach. He doesn’t look up at them when they enter, but he knows they’re there, because he asks, “Where is he?” in a terrifyingly casual tone.

The lovers share a look, and Buddy takes the lead. “Doc, there was nothing we could do.”

“He was lungshot,” Darling says. “Fucking drowning and bleeding out at the same time. He needed surgery.”

“Yeah, and we don’t have a surgeon,” Buddy says.

Doc closes his eyes, massaging his forehead with one hand and letting the other creep dangerously close to that shotgun. “ _Where **is** he?_” he asks a second time, in a tone that makes it very clear there won’t be a third.

“In the back of a coroner’s van, if I had to guess,” Buddy says.

Now, Doc’s eyes open, staring straight through the two of them. “You _left_ him?”

“The cops were right there!” Buddy says. “What were we supposed to do, bring him here and throw him a funeral?”

Doc places both hands on the table, and slowly stands up. “Let me get this straight,” he says, eerily calm. “After the best fucking getaway driver in the history of cars _does his job_ and gets you away from the cops, you decide to repay him by leaving his fucking corpse as a piece of meat to throw the fuzz off your scent. Is that what I’m hearing?”

“Hey, look, we tried, alright!?” Buddy says, suddenly defensive. “I told him not to drive, told him to get in the back so Darling could patch him up. And you know what he did? He fucking _pulled_ on me! How’s that for gratitude?”

Doc’s shotgun hand twitches, and Darling jumps in

“I stayed with him as long as I could!” she says. “I even played him a song.”

It’s subtle, but a little tension seeps out of Doc’s shoulders at that. He is silent for a second, breathing in and out, and she can practically see the wheels turning in his mind. “This is over,” he says. “We need to get the money orders exchanged ASAP and then we all need to disappear.”

“Why?” Buddy asks.

“Because, _Jason_ ,” Doc says. “Bodies are evidence. Evidence is _bad_. A body leads to a face, a name, common whereabouts, known associates. It _compromises_ us.”

“How?” Buddy asks. “Nobody’s seen us with the kid except his girlfriend, and she doesn’t know shit about us. Even if she did, I don’t think it’d be that hard to shut her up.”

“You will do no such thing,” Doc says evenly. “You will call your _guy_ immediately and begin the process of spinning this straw into gold.”

Buddy raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. I’m calling…”

His phone is out and he’s walking off as Doc looks down at the cars and cassettes, eyes growing distant for a moment. Darling’s not sure what to do, so she waits for a few seconds, her eyes scanning the room until she spots the rest of Bats’s body. “Should we, uhh… clean him up?”

“Huh?” Doc says, shaking out of his reverie and following her eyes to the nearly-headless corpse. “Him? Sure, yeah, knock yourself out.”

She squints at him. “You don’t think we should clean up the dead body?”

“Yes, I do, which is why I told you to do it,” Doc says. “Go get some cleaning supplies.”

She starts to walk out, and pauses. “Where from?”

“I don’t care!” Doc’s hand slams onto the table. “Anywhere! Just go get them! Just… go! Leave! _Get out_.” Doc sinks back into his seat and stares at the cassettes.

Darling takes a deep breath, and leaves to go look for some bleach, walking around outside in the fading afternoon light, trying not to look as guilty as she feels, and avoiding every cop car she sees.

* * *

Joseph finds out from the police.

Late that afternoon, he manages to wake up, dial 911 and make enough noise to convince the dispatch to send somebody out. Naturally, it’s not somebody who understands sign language. His shaky arthritic hands aren’t much good for writing, so he gets the distinct pleasure of playing a losing game of charades with some fat white cop before they finally get their hands on an interpreter so he can tell them what’s going on.

Two men came in, roughed him up, trashed the place and took something out of his son’s room.

His son?

Yes, his foster son, Miles. Joseph thinks he might be in real danger.

Does he have a picture?

Of course, he does. He tells them there’s a yearbook somewhere in the trash heap they turned the boy’s room into, but that’s really old. Kid dropped out at 16. He has a more recent one. He rolls over to the shelf where he kept it. Miles never liked having his picture taken; would play cryptid and hide whenever a camera came out. He was a crafty little shit, but you don’t get to Joseph’s age without becoming a little crafty yourself; Joseph caught him cooking breakfast one day, smiling and singing in the middle of a pancake flip. The camera flash made him drop the pancake, and Joseph wound up laughing so hard that he slid out of his wheelchair. Miles was red with embarrassment while he was putting Joseph back in; it probably didn’t help that Joseph was still laughing at him. After that, Miles jokingly threatened to drop him every time he had to lift him out of his chair. But he never did. Miles never dropped him, not once.

They sift through the wreckage a little bit, find the photo, and…

Well.

Joseph may not be able to hear, but he can see. And to a degree, you can see silence. Mouths stop moving. Bodies stop gesturing. Speech is more than just noise; it’s motion. And that’s how he can tell the terrible silence that falls over the room the second those cops lay eyes on Miles’s face. They all gather around, huddle together, take turns looking. One of them snaps a picture and sends it off somewhere and then they wait. Silent, and still. Terribly, terribly still.

After a few moments, one of the cops looks down at his phone, says something to the interpreter, and they approach him together. The cop kneels in front of him and takes off his hat, looks him in the eye, and…

Miles never dropped him. Never let him down. Not once.

Not until today.

Today, Joseph learns just how low an old man’s heart can sink without falling right out of him.

* * *

 Debora finds out from the Fox 5 News.

She’s just sat down at the end of a long and strenuous night of trying to think about anything but _him_. A night where she threw herself into work so hard that she polished every table to a shine you could check your makeup in, cleaned the bathroom to a sparkle you need sunglasses to look directly into.

Sunglasses. _Damn it_. There he is again.

She sits in a booth and leans her head back, closes her eyes and lets the sounds of the TV wash over her. It’s a special report on the robbery earlier that day, the one they can’t seem to shut up about.

“ _…and police have now released the identity of the deceased driver: 21-year-old Miles Fletcher, a Dekalb County native._ ”

She feels herself huff a slight laugh. So they finally got one of them? The cops have been chasing those robbers for months, but the robbers always ran circles around them. Guess somebody’s luck finally ran out.

“ _Fletcher was wounded while escaping police, and later found dead at the Five Points Parking Garage. Police have obtained information that suggests Fletcher was the driver for all of the recent hub heists, and that he may been involved in similar incidents going back nearly a decade._ ”

She feels her brow furrow. _Nearly a decade_? He was only 21; he would’ve been robbing banks since he was barely a teenager. Boy, they really do start them young these days…

“ _Police also believe that Fletcher may not have been an entirely willing participant in these heists—”_

 _I have to drive again. It’s not what I want_.

Her breath hitches. There he is again. She just can’t seem to get away from him tonight. She’s got so many questions, and he just isn’t around to answer any of them.

“ _…ster father claims that he was at the mercy of a local criminal organization, and that he was coerced and pressured into being their driver._ ”

 _I’m a driver.  
_ Oh, like a chauffeur?

She stops breathing for a second. Her eyes remain closed. She’s being silly. She’s being ridiculous. Her mind is playing tricks on her. It’s like when you see a face in the moon or something; your brain’s just trained to make you think everything’s about you. It can’t possibly… just because he looked about 20… there’s no way. There’s no way.

“ _...other suspects are still at large. Eyewitnesses describe them as a Caucasian male in his late-40s, a Hispanic female in her mid-20s, and an African American man in his late-40s, all heavily tattooed. If you have any information, please call CrimeStoppers, at…_ ”

And suddenly she sees them. She sees _him_ , sour-faced and closed-off as he walked in that night, accompanied by people who made her skin crawl. She sees their tattoos in vivid relief, hears the condescension in the black man’s voice as he speaks over everyone else, feels the waves of violence radiating off the white man, sees the hateful sneer of the Hispanic woman. She sees him, sitting rigid beside them, never looking more uncomfortable than at that moment, pretending he doesn’t know her and silently _begging_ for her to do the same.

You drive around important people?  
_Something like that._  
Anyone I’d know?  
**I hope not.**

And finally, she sees the last time she saw him, sorrow and something like shame in his eyes as he slid her the napkin note and walked out of her life, never to come back.

_Road trip, 2AM.  
I want us to head west on 20, in a car we can’t afford, with a plan we don’t have. Keep driving and never stop._

She keeps her eyes closed. She won’t look. She can’t look.

The door to the backroom opens and she hears Jenny walk in. “Debbie? Debbie, what’s wrong?”

She’s already started crying. She didn’t even notice. Jenny tries to hug her, but she shakes her head and points at the TV.

“What? Are you sad about the All-Star Game? What’s wrong, sweetie?”

She opens her eyes. Of course, the news has already moved onto sports. Of course they aren’t going to wait for her to get her shit together and face the truth. Of course.

Her inability to look is suddenly replaced by a _need_ to look. To see. To know for sure. She wipes her tears and pulls out her phone and pulls up the Fox 5 News site and

“Oh my _God_ ,” Jenny breathes.

There he is. The biggest picture on their home page, the biggest story. A little younger, a little skinnier. No buds, no shades. But oh, that grin, she’d know that grin anywhere. She could look at it forever. _She’ll never see it again._ And the flood of grief that threatens to drown her at his face is overcome only by the fiery wall of anger rising at the words underneath it:

**Police: Bank robber killed during escape**

He wasn’t a robber. She knows who the robbers were. _And_ , she thinks as she looks up the number for CrimeStoppers, _I’m damn sure gonna tell somebody about it_.

* * *

Later that night, after walls have been scrubbed and bodies have been packed and sent to Sunset Drive, plans and contacts arranged and exchanged, Doc, Buddy, and Darling are in the elevator together for the final time, each holding their cut of the money orders. Buddy and Darling had the privilege of splitting Bats’ share, but Doc took Baby’s.

“I’m not keeping it for myself,” he had said pointedly as he packed away the last of the cars and tapes. They didn’t bring it up again.

As the elevator comes to a halt, Buddy starts to give the benediction. “Well, Doc, it’s been…” Doc is already out the doors before they finish opening, without a look or a word to either of them. “…a real kick in the teeth.”

Buddy stalks off, and she follows him. Doc has already split off to head for his own car, but just before he is out of sight, he stops. “What did you play?”

She blinks, confused for a second, figuring out what he means just as he clarifies it.

“The song, _Monica_ ,” Doc says, turning his head just slightly towards her. “What did you play for him?”

“Oh,” she says. “Uhh… Easy, I think was the name. By the… Commandoes?”

“The _Commodores_ ,” Doc corrects. He’s silent for a second. “Good. That’s… good. He always liked that one.”

Darling nods, not sure what to say. “He was a good kid.”

Doc stares straight ahead. “Yeah… he was.”

He walks off, and Darling catches up to Buddy. “I can’t wait to quit this fucking city and forget all of this shit.”

“What shit?” Buddy asks.

“This weird, guilty-feeling shit. This is what I signed onto this life to _avoid_ ,” Darling says.

Buddy puts an arm around her. “There, there, my dear. Soon, life will be nothing but candy-cane condoms and lollipop lingerie for the two of us once again,” he says with a grin. “Sugar, and sex, and lots and lots of snow.”

She kisses him, long and languid. He always did know how to chase the demons away. They hop in the car and start to pull out of the garage.

The last she sees of Doc, he’s sitting in his car, not moving. Just staring straight ahead in the driver’s seat.

It’s kind of fitting.

* * *

Baby knows. He knows the second he throws the car in reverse and leaves that poor screaming teller and that poor dead security guard behind. He knows.

Not what’s gonna happen, mind you. Nobody knows that. No, he knows what he _deserves_. Because he has never hated himself more than at that moment. He’s just shown that teller—and the whole world beside her—who and what he really is. He saw injustice, he saw evil, he saw the chance to remove it from the world and what did he do? He followed orders. He moved the fucking car, and he got them out of there. Like a _coward_. A quivering little lapdog who goes and does where and what he’s told. Oh, they trained him but good. Whipped him right into shape.

When he stops in that alley, and Darling says “they’re gonna fucking shoot us”—part of him hopes she’s right. Just shoot them. Shoot them all, bring them down in a hail of gunfire, _end it_. Every single one of them deserves to die, himself included. They’re all terrible people; he’s just the only one with enough of a conscience to still be bothered by it. Which is why he has to floor it when he realizes Bats is about to kill that cop.

The almost-funny thing is, Baby could’ve killed that cop. Should’ve killed him, from a survival standpoint. It’s the dodging, the curving around him that gives the cop enough of a bead on them to actually shoot the car. If Baby had just hit him, he never would’ve _been_ hit. It’s almost funny. _Almost_.

He doesn’t feel it. Not really, not at first. He feels _something_ , but it comes and goes so fast he can’t even think about it. He’s got a job to do. He’s come this far, he might as well finish. He doesn’t even realize he’s wounded until Bats tells him, and then, he just—he doesn’t care.

It’s probably pure adrenaline that pushes him through the rest of the chase. He’s pissed off and angry and fatally fucking wounded and he just wants it to be over with. It almost feels like he’s pushing towards his own personal finish line, so when Buddy tries to put him out of the driver’s seat, Baby’s not having that. That’s why he pulls on him—Baby’s the driver. _He’s the fucking driver_. He’s decided who he’s gonna be, he’s decided what kind of person he is, now let him fucking be it. Let him drive the fucking car. Let him get to the finish line—he’ll sure as hell get there faster than _Buddy_.

It’s just before they get to the parking garage, when the adrenaline is wearing off and the pain is setting in, when the oxygen count in Baby’s blood is starting to get low and his punctured lung is starting to collapse in earnest—that’s when the fear sets in. That’s when Baby’s brain suddenly realizes that _he_ _doesn’t want to die_. Not here. Not now. Not like this, not with these people, not _for_ these people. Not when there’s… there’s nobody to take care of Joseph. Nobody else, he doesn’t have anybody else, and somebody has to, somebody HAS to take care of him because he deserves it and, and, and Debora—oh god, Debora’s going to think. Shit. She’s gonna think he’s a _bank robber_. She’s gonna… well, he _is_ a bank robber, but she’s gonna think that’s **all** he is and it’s not. It’s not. He’s more than that. Isn’t he? Is he? He loves her. He loves her, he never said that. He has to say it. She has to know it.

Buddy pulls him out of the car and Baby clings to him. He’s warm, and Baby is cold. Buddy will keep him warm. Buddy’ll take care of him. Buddy’s his buddy, they like… they like the same songs. Their killer tracks. Buddy won’t let him die.

Except Buddy is putting him down, Buddy’s putting him back in. The warmth is leaving him, and no. No. “No… no!” He tries to grab Buddy but Buddy’s too strong and he’s too weak. He can’t keep hold of him. Can’t talk. Buddy’s talking to him, but he can’t, can’t hear over… The ringing. God, the ringing. It’s worse than ever. It hurts. His chest, his ears, all of it. It _hurts_. He can’t think.

Darling is there. She’s talking to him. He can’t hear her. He asks… he can’t think of the words. So he motions for it. His music. _Please stop the ringing_.

She gets it. He reads her lips. _Who’s gonna sing you to sleep, Baby boy_?

His mom. He wants his mom. But she’s not here. The closest he can get is her song. He asks.

She plays it. Puts his other earbud in, kisses his forehead, and suddenly he’s back in bed, back at home when he was little and mom was laying him down to bed with his earbuds in. Even then, he liked to listen to music when he went to bed. Liked to listen and sing along under his breath. _Why in the world would anybody put chains on me?_

He blinks, and mom is gone and he’s alone. He tries to close his eyes, tries to get lost in the music, turns it up louder, but the ringing is winning out. The music is leaving him. Song’s over, Baby.

He’s… he’s…

He’s sorry. He’s sorry. He’s so fucking sorry.

He’s cold.

It hurts.

The ringing is too loud.

And…

* * *

_The police find him minutes later, slumped over in his seat, iPod playing at max volume in ears that can no longer hear it. The coroner removes his earbuds and turns the music off, handing the iPod to the police for evidence. The report detailing his death is dry and clinical; were the police a little more poetic, it might read:_

_He died alone, on a dark grey morning, with music humming in his ears._

* * *

Baby’s— _Miles’s_ funeral is sparsely attended. It’s just a few girls from the diner, Debora, and Joseph. Miles didn’t really have anybody else. Hell, even the girls from the diner are there more for Debbie than they are for him. They didn’t really know the kid that well. Apparently, nobody did.

Debbie glances at the coffin and tries not to shudder. She hates dead bodies, hates the weird, waxy way they look. He doesn’t look anything like he did when he was alive. He was beautiful when he was alive. She hates looking at him now—no, not him, at this _thing_ that’s supposed to stand in for him. It’s not him. Not anymore.

So instead, she looks off to the side, and sees an elderly black man in a wheelchair. Somehow, she thinks she knows who he is. She walks up to him and waits until he is looking right at her, before saying slowly, “Hi, my name is Debora.”

The man smiles at her, and then looks off to the side and waves. A kindly looking black nurse comes over and smiles at her. She looks at Joseph, and Joseph signs. “Hello, Debora. My name is Joseph.”

She looks back and forth between the two of them just long enough to make Joseph laugh. He signs something else.

“And this is Cherita, my nurse and interpreter,” the lady says, smiling and saying on her own. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” she replies.

Joseph signs something, and she’s amazed at how expressive he is, even if she doesn’t quite understand what he’s saying.

“Miles told me about you,” Cherita translates.

“He told me about you, too,” Debora says, being sure to speak to Joseph. She read about that somewhere—always speak to the person, not the interpreter. “Not much, though. He… didn’t talk much.”

Joseph shakes his head with a grin. More signing.

“He wouldn’t shut up about you,” Cherita says.

Debora laughs, and finds herself blushing a little.

Joseph smiles, and his expression grows a little dourer. He gestures to the coffin, crosses his fists over his chest, and then gestures to Debora. She almost doesn’t need a translator.

“He loved you,” Cherita says.

She sighs. “He didn’t even tell me his real name.”

Joseph shakes his head. A few more signs.

“He walked lighter with you in his heart,” Cherita says. More signs. “Sometimes, I thought he would start flying.”

She smiles and lets herself take a tiny glance at the coffin. “He’s flying now.”

* * *

_After the funeral, Debora starts to visit Joseph every Sunday. When he runs out of money to pay his nurse, she moves in with him. He needs somebody to take care of him, and if she’s honest, she needs somebody to take care of. She learns sign language surprisingly fast._

_Despite Debbie’s best attempts to describe them in detail, none of the other robbers involved in the Post Office Heist are ever caught, nor is the mysterious man who masterminded it. As a result, Miles Fletcher accidentally becomes a bit of an outlaw legend due to being the only real person confirmed to have been involved in all the Atlanta Hub Heists. Popular opinion slowly turns him into some kind of romantic superthief who masterminded the whole thing. They start calling him ‘The Kid Who Robbed Atlanta.’_

_She hates it. She knows that’s the last way he would want to be remembered. Sadly, we don’t always get to choose our legacy._

_Starting a few weeks after the funeral, Debbie gets a check for $1000 in the mail, made out to her with no return address. The following week, she gets another, and another. They’ve been coming every week for five years. When she moved in with Joseph, the checks moved with her. She burns every single one that comes. Somehow, she knows what they’re from, and she wants no part in it._

_Other than that, life largely goes back to normal._

_Nothing changes._

_Ultimately, her Miles, her Baby, is just another soul chewed up and spat out by the city she calls home. He wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last. And that might be the saddest part of all._

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, my name is Morkhan and this movie owns my soul, so I’ve decided to write a few things for it. This is part 1 of what I call the Needle Scratch series, named after the sound of a record player being forced off-track. That's basically what this series is; me forcing the plot of Baby Driver off-track and seeing how it plays out.
> 
> In other words, this is a bunch of alternate endings to Baby Driver. To borrow visual novel terms, if we think of the movie as the Golden Ending, these are various Bad Ends for Baby. I think of the movie as a pitched battle for Baby’s soul, one where he ultimately wins. These are all the ways he could’ve lost that battle.
> 
> Starting with the one where he just straight-up fucking dies!


End file.
